Ivy took the cup and drank the liquid inside. It tasted of mulled blueberries and wild honey and afternoon sun. As she drank it, warmth spilled down her throat and spread throughout her insides until they were filled with summer.

She looked around the clearing then and found that she was surrounded by all manner of forest creatures—owls and foxes, dormice and squirrels, bees and deer and rabbits.

Except the longer Ivy stared back, the more certain she was that they were not animals at all. They had begun to shimmer. Suddenly, the foxes were elves with red cheeks and ginger hair. The dormice were timid gnomes that looked up at her with wide eyes. The bees were a colony of fairies, fluttering busily around their queen. The deer were fauns who bowed to her over their hooves.

“I don’t understand,” she said, drawing nearer to Shilling, who was, thankfully, still a wolf dog. “What’s going on?”

“Magic, of course,” said one of the tree girls, who Ivy thought might be a pixie.

“But Gran told me that all magic creatures were driven into extinction,” said Ivy.

“Almost,” said the other pixie. “Now we live only in the oldest of forests, and we take great precautions to keep ourselves hidden.”

“Only your gran could see us for what we truly are,” said one of the fauns.

“Why?” Ivy asked.

“Your grandmother was the Keeper of the Forest,” said the fairy queen, who wore a crown of clover and sat upon a throne of holly leaves. “A protector of its magic. As long as she was here, no harm could come to us.”

“But now she’s gone,” said the first pixie. “And the forest is in grave danger.”

“And you,” piped the second pixie, “are the only one who can save it.”

“Me?” gasped Ivy. “Why me?”

“Because, child,” the fairy queen explained, “you are of the forest. Your gran found you here as a babe, just as the last Keeper found her. You may look like a normal human girl, but you’ve more magic in your veins than any who stand before you. If you could look inside yourself, you would find a heart made of balsam bark, bones made of river rocks, and vines instead of veins, with the morning dew running through them.”

Ivy clutched herself, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “If this was true, my gran would have told me.”

“She could not,” said the faun in an airy voice. “The Keeper is forbidden to share the secrets of the forest.”

“But now you are Keeper,” said the first pixie.

“And you must banish the witch,” said the second pixie. “Or we are lost.”

“Even if I am what you say,” Ivy protested, “I am cursed. Can’t you see how I flicker? I’ll soon disappear altogether.”

Even now, she could see only the barest outline of the girl she had been before.